Soyo Oka
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Soyo Oka was born in Nishinomiya City, Hyogo, Japan on April 9, 1964. She began her work in music at the age of 6 when she started playing the piano. She attended the Osaka College of Music and studied music composition where she decided that there was a future in making music for video games. While in school she studied the work of Koji Kondo and electronic music in general. After school, in 1987, Oka began working for Nintendo under Shigeru Miyamoto. She composed music for several Nintendo games. In 1995, Oka quit Nintendo to pursue her own work as a freelance artist. Recently she has been making music for TV commercials and other advertising and writing columns in music magazines. Oka has worked freelance for Fujitsu, Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Seiko, Sony, Toshiba, and Yamaha.
Oka may be doing work on more video games soon, but her primary goal is to score movies. She also wants to release a solo album.
Some of her influences include Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Debussy, Stravinsky, John Williams, Lyle Mays, YMO, Queen, and Chick Corea. She also respects the video game music work of Yoko Kanno and Koji Kondo.
Oka enjoys video games like Gradius, and also games that heavily involve music such as PaRappa the Rapper (PS1), Um Jammer Lammy (PS1), ADepth, Dance Dance Revolution, and various other Beatmania titles.
Music Development
FDS
For Excitebike, Soyo utilized a sound driver written by Akito Nakatsuka, in which music was written in 6502 assembly.
NES
For her NES and Disk System music, Oka wrote the music in 6502 assembly macros in different drivers.
For Vs. Excitebike, she used Akito Nakatsuka's sound driver, as he was her supervisor. In the unreleased SimCity game, she used Koji Kondo's sound driver from Super Mario Bros. 3, albeit modified. Though she verified composing all songs in the NES version of SimCity, Koji may have been her supervisor for that game as well.
Ice Hockey uses a sound engine made by Hirokazu Tanaka. The Disk System version has different music than the NES version, but both were scored by Oka.
SNES
Oka used Nintendo's proprietary software, Kankichi-kun. Music was entered in macros on a Sony NEWS computer.
Gameography
| Released | Title | Sample | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1988-01-21 | Ice Hockey (FDS) (アイス ホッケー) | ||
| 1988-01-21 | Ice Hockey (NES) | ||
| 1988-04-14 | Famicom Grand Prix II: 3D Hot Rally (FDS) (ファミコングランプリ３Ｄホットラリー) | |
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| 1988-12-09 | VS Excitebike (VS) (ＶＳエキサイトバイク) | Vs. music only. | |
| 1989-10-14 | Famicom Mukashi Banashi: Yuuyuuki - Zenpen (FDS) (ふぁみこんむかし話 遊遊記 前編) | ||
| 1989-11-14 | Famicom Mukashi Banashi: Yuuyuuki - Kouhen (FDS) (ふぁみこんむかし話 遊遊記 後編) | ||
| 1990-12-21 | Pilotwings (SNES) (パイロットウィングス) | ||
| 1991-04-26 | SimCity (SNES) (シムシティ) | |
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| 1992-08-27 | Super Mario Kart (SNES) (スーパーマリオカート) | With Taro Bando. | |
| 1993-07-14 | Super Mario All-Stars (SNES) (スーパーマリオコレクション) | ||
| 1993-12-10 | Wario's Woods (SNES) (ワリオの森) | ||
| 1994-02-19 | Wario's Woods (NES) | ||
| 1997-09-18 | Battle Bugs (PS1) | ||
| 1997-10-20 | Lagnacure (PS1) | ||
| 2004-02-26 | Nurse Witch Komugi-chan Magicarte (PS2) (ナースウィッチ小麦ちゃんマジカルて) | Confirmed by Square Enix Music Online. [1] | |
| 2011-01-20 | Zombie Daisuki (NDS) (ぞんびだいすき) | ||
| 2015-09-03 | Sailor Moon Drops (AND) (セーラームーンドロップス) | Confirmed on Twitter. [2] | |
| 2016-11-16 | Monstie Drop Monster Hunter Stories (AND) (オトモンドロップ モンスターハンター ストーリーズ) | Confirmed on Twitter. [3] | |
| Unreleased | Sim City (NES) |
Picture Gallery
Unknown source.
Unknown source.
Links
- twitter.com/soyooka - Twitter.
- mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,100042/ - MobyGames.
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soyo_Oka - Wikipedia.
- dj-alice.com - Old official web site.
- SOYO OKA | COMPOSER (2022-) - official web site.
- LOOP8A - First EP 2022
- LOOP816 - First Album 2023
